


on the nature of absence

by Joana789



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Character Study, Established Relationship, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, POV Andrew Minyard, Post-Canon, Relationship Study, andrew just misses neil because he's in love ok, missing each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 08:43:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16059563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joana789/pseuds/Joana789
Summary: Tomorrow, things will go back to normal. Neil will go back to New York. Andrew will stay where he is. He will drive Neil to the airport and kiss him goodbye in the car where no unwanted attention can be given, then watch him leave, watch him go.Andrew remembers every single thing that has ever happened to him. He does not remember ever feeling quite like this.





	on the nature of absence

**Author's Note:**

> this fic happened solely because i wanted to get back into the groove of writing after almost a year without it, so if what you're about to read is shitty, i'm really sorry

 

Here is the issue — Andrew remembers every single thing that has ever happened to him, and every single thing he has ever done.

  
———

  
Neil is a mess of disheveled hair and flushed skin, mellow and familiar in Andrew’s bed and warm underneath Andrew’s touch, sprawled under him like a half-unwrapped gift. His eyes are searing but still heavy-lidded, weighted down with the remains of sleep. Andrew watches him get his breath back after the kiss, feels his fingers dance against the hem of his t-shirt, then dip under it, press against Andrew’s skin. The smile that blooms on Neil’s face when he feels Andrew shiver is as unnerving as it is dazzling.

Neil says, ”This is nice.”

It’s morning. Early enough not to get out of bed yet, but late enough for the light to come through the window without preamble and soften the edges of the room, soften the blow that is the sight of Neil, like this. There are shadows in the hollow of his throat, a smattering of freckles mixed in between the scars, daylight weaving through his hair. Andrew watches it like he watches everything else about Neil.

” _Nice_ ” wouldn’t be the word Andrew would use if he were to.

Tomorrow, things will go back to normal. Neil will go back to New York. Andrew will stay where he is. He will drive Neil to the airport and kiss him goodbye in the car where no unwanted attention can be given, then watch him leave, watch him go.

Right now, he breathes in, gets one hand in Neil’s hair and the other on his hip, angles Neil’s head where he wants it and nips at the skin of his jaw where it’s warm and sun-kissed and, for once, unmarred. He can hear the slight catch of Neil’s breath, wants to fold it like a piece of paper and tuck away for no-one else to find, to tuck it in between the pages of a book to preserve like some people do with flower petals.

”You know,” Neil says around another one of his shaky breathe-ins, and Andrew stills with his lips pressed to the skin of Neil’s neck, ”I can’t remember you ever being so soft with me before.”

It is — strange. Not really what Andrew was expecting, and he stops the words from sinking in before they can settle somewhere he wouldn’t want them to. They sound unreal, too, in some twisted, off-setting way, because Andrew is not soft, or gentle, or anything of the kind. He’s never been. Neil knows this. He is just what he has to be, here, in the hazy, half-unreal setting of a morning with the sunlight pouring in like it’s liquid.

Andrew moves away just an inch, breathes in heavy. Neil’s whole demeanor is still a string pulled a shy of too tight, touch searing and heartbeat quick, but he is, somehow, relaxed and mellow, too. Those two things should not mix, and yet here they are.

”Your memory’s shitty, then,” he says, lets his lips meet the heated skin of Neil’s cheek for a second, touch-and-go against the curve of his scar. Then, ”Why are you talking when you weren’t asked to.”

He feels Neil smile, a quiet eruption, and the next second this very same smile is pressed into the hollow of Andrew’s throat.

”I’ve heard that you like it when I talk,” Neil says, sucks on Andrew’s skin. His fingers slide against Andrew’s ribs. If Andrew puts less effort into suppressing a shudder than he usually would, nobody has to know.

”You were lied to,” Andrew says. His voice sounds just on the edge of unfamiliar, as if the sunlights thawed all the rough edges of it away while Andrew was asleep.

Neil kisses him again, then, and Andrew lets him; angles his head, presses his fingertips into Neil’s hipbone and then lower, tugs at Neil’s hair and swallows the pleased sound Neil makes at that. He will be gone tomorrow, a flight away, because that’s how it is, and they’ll both have to once again adjust to the frames of their separate lifestyles that are now temporarily being ignored. Andrew has gotten better at admitting to himself that Neil is someone he might miss. Give him a couple more months and Andrew will, maybe, admit to more along the way, but right now it’s that: missing Neil Josten, who comes into his apartment unceremoniously familiar, stays no longer than a breath and then leaves Andrew’s bed smelling like a shampoo Andrew himself doesn’t even use.

Andrew’s not particularly soft with him, but if he were — how could anyone be surprised?

  
———

  
Whenever he and Renee sparred, back in Palmetto, they were vicious with each other.

It wasn’t always a show of knives, but it was ruthless still — a push and pull, block and swerve and dodge until they were both out of breath, on the floor. Not holding back was a peculiar sensation, and then it was too sharp, exaggerated by of the drugs in Andrew’s system, and then they were back at it again, holding on, holding guard. Renee was never cautious with him because sometimes those sparring sessions were as important to her as the cross at her neck, the hours she had spent kneeling in church. Andrew was never gentle with her because she did not need that, and neither did he. He was never cut out for gentleness.

He remembers every cut and bruise they ever gave each other.

Renee’s tracing the spines of the few books Andrew has in his apartment with careful fingers. Andrew’s flipping through the channels on TV, from a reality show to a comedy to an ad, not really looking anyway. He keeps stealing glances at the way Renee smiles as she reads the book titles.

She is on leave from the Peace Corps, only here to visit and then she’ll be gone again, off to wherever they send her next, swift like quicksilver. A lot of things seem like that, now. Andrew didn’t question it when she asked if she could see his apartment, only got into his car and drove her here. Because yes, she could.

Her nails are painted pastel pink. Her left hand is bandaged up to her wrist. Andrew’s gaze stumbles upon it and then stays.

”You don’t have many things in here,” Renee notes, moving on from the books, stepping away from the shelf and going to the windowsill instead. There is a photograph there, framed and purposefully placed, one of the two pictures Andrew has here at all. ”It’s kind of empty.”

The photograph is of Neil. He looks ridiculous in it, but that’s nothing new. Andrew watches as Renee takes it in her bandaged hand, then flits his gaze back to the screen of the TV. The credits of some meager-looking TV show are rolling.

”I barely live here anyway,” he says because it is true. It is more like a hotel than anything else at this point, an in-and-out, no vacancy. Andrew’s only here when he isn’t at practice, or in the middle of a game, or on some shitty plane, flying across the country to another apartment that he owns a key to but that is not his.

Renee tilts her head and the light makes her pastel hair look almost white.

”How’s Neil doing?” she asks, blinking up at Andrew. She has made a habit out of it — pointing out what it is that Andrew’s thinking about while making it sound like an off-handed comment.

”You can ask him yourself if you want to know,” Andrew says, more out of spite than anything else because he’s, still, an instigator at heart. ”As far as I’m aware, he still has a phone.”

Renee puts the picture back where it was, and the movement’s a bit too careful. Andrew keeps looking at the bandage around her wrist. ”He’d just tell me he’s _fine_.”

He would. It’s what he tells Andrew as well, every time, voice almost stretched thin over the phone with how far away he is, all the way in New York. Andrew is, suddenly, drained. He doesn’t think about the reason. ”He is as irritating as always.”

”You must miss each other,” Renee tries then, and something in Andrew jerks and quivers, a reaction. He pushes it down and away.

”I’m not talking about that with you,” he says instead, and then, finally, ”What happened to your hand?”

Renee blinks and lifts the bandaged hand from her lap like she’s only now reminded there’s something wrong with it at all, like she needs to examine it again now that it’s been brought to her attention again. ”Oh, it was an accident at work,” she says, shrugging. ”Don’t worry.”

And Andrew doesn’t, because he’s seen her get through much worse. Renee’s soft with people around her because it’s an art she’s learned with her hands folded in prayer, something she’s ripped away from her former self and then managed to keep and called forgiveness. But Andrew’s also seen her with blood in her mouth, smiling through it, across from him under the harsh fluorescent lights, out of breath.

”Why would I worry about you,” he says, and it makes Renee smile.

  
———

  
Andrew remembers every single thing he has ever done. It is not anyone’s fault. Like a genetic spin the bottle that ends with worse than expected. He remembers the people he’d hurt, the people that had hurt him, the good and the bad, everything, everything, like it’s engraved in his brain tissue.

He doesn’t remember ever feeling quite like this.

”How was the game?” Neil asks, his voice different over the phone than it would be in person, if he was sitting next to Andrew in the passenger seat of the car. It’s already dark outside; Andrew keeps looking at the lights of the street lamps through the windshield, watches people leaving the stadium in a thinning out stream.

”It was like any other game,” he says. Neil makes a low, derisive sound.

They won by two points tonight. It was a rather brutal show, and when the goal lit up red for the last time and his teammates roared in victory on the court, Andrew let his racquet clatter to the ground. There’s fatigue settled in the crevices of his body that he needs to sleep away, but that’s for later.

”Congratulations on the win,” Neil says and Andrew listens. Neil calls him after every single one of the games and the pattern of their conversations never really changes, flimsy and unsatisfying when one of them is always tired after the exertion, worn out after the highs and lows of adrenaline. Andrew always picks up the phone anyway. ”I wish I was there to see it myself.”

The parking lot is almost completely empty, now, but for some reason, he still feels like someone’s listening in. All the people in between him and Neil, too far away. Abruptly and stupidly, Andrew wants to get rid of the distance between them like people throw away unwanted gifts; tear off the wrapping paper that's supposed to distinguish it as something less ugly than it really is, discard the hideous thing. He pushes the impulse down and it throbs in his veins.

It’s a strange feeling, to yearn for something that is supposed to already be his. To miss someone. To be missed in return.

”You watched it on TV,” Andrew says, tired after the game, tired of something else, too. ”It’s the same thing.”

Neil sighs; over the shitty connection, the sound of it crackles like electricity. ”You know it’s not.”

He does. Andrew has already bought plane tickets for next month, another flight on another fucking plane. There are certain things, now, that he is ready to do for certain people. They’re going to see each other in four weeks. Andrew wants to light a cigarette and he wants for Neil to be there to steal it away from him.

”You were great tonight,” Neil tells him.

And here is the thing — Andrew feels deprived of something like a plant that has not been watered, and Neil is a downpour.

  
———

  
Neil’s apartment is just as empty and impersonal as Andrew’s. It’s messier but less lived in, because that idiot spends more time on the court than anyone else Andrew knows, maybe with the exception of Kevin. There are photographs of the Foxes in the living room and a lonely plant Nicky brought a couple weeks after Neil moved in here that only Andrew remembers to water, but apart from that, it’s all empty space and bare walls. It says something about the both of them, Andrew thinks, about how they are not willing to really accommodate to their spaces if the other is not around.

”Like you’re any better,” Neil tells him, smiling when Andrew makes a comment about it, something about his Exy addiction getting worse every day and how the apartment looks more like a modern installation than an actual living space. Andrew says nothing.

They’re lying on the couch in the living room, the TV turned off, Neil’s head in Andrew’s lap, his eyes half-closed. Andrew has been trying to read, but he keeps getting distracted by the way the aftermath adrenaline of the flight is still rolling off of him, keeps getting distracted by the way Neil’s features have settled into something relaxed and intoxicating like an art piece. The freckles and scars on his face look like a constellation. Andrew weaves his fingers into Neil’s hair and lets his hand stay there, heavy and instinctive, when Neil leans into the touch.

”I talked to the coach yesterday,” Neil says after a moment, then, cuts through the silence, voice sprawling over the syllables. ”I said I want to transfer.”

Andrew blinks down at him.

They had talked about this. Neil had hinted at it, but Andrew only said _do what you want_ , because they both knew how things were — Neil’s team was at the top of the rankings, with good achievements and big expectations and it was all common knowledge. When Andrew had played against them, they were fierce and unyielding, and everything Neil could need to get better than he already was, as Kevin told him on the phone one day, four seconds before Andrew hung up on him. If Neil wanted to make it big, this was the place to start, and to stay.

Neil has a habit of making mistakes on his own and then telling Andrew about them when it is almost too late to fix anything. Andrew wonders if that’s what it is.

”This is a bad idea,” he says. Neil opens his eyes and looks at him, inevitable.

”Everything about me is a bad idea,” he says, like an echo of a song from a decade that’s passed. Andrew is not the only person to remember the words, for once. ”Or did something change?”

”It all still applies,” Andrew tells him, and then the question slips before he can stop it. His grip loosens in Neil’s hair. ”Why.”

”Because I’m sick of missing you, Andrew,” Neil says, and there it is, raw and tired, and maybe Andrew was not ready for it, after all. Something in his chest quivers and he smothers it. Neil’s features harden like he’s getting ready for a fight, like he's sure of the outcome of it already. ”I’m sick of flying back and forth. I’m sick of talking on the phone instead of seeing you in person, I’m sick of this apartment." A breath. ”I miss you. All the time.”

Andrew thinks about standing at the edge of the roof and looking down into the expanse beneath his feet and pressing his fingers to feel his own pulse. The feeling's similar. 

”What about making Court,” he asks, aiming for sarcastic, only it comes out flat.

”I can make Court while playing somewhere else, too,” Neil says and attempts a smile but it’s sharp and unpracticed and Andrew wants to wipe it off his face immediately. ”Why do you suddenly care about Exy?”

”I don’t give a fuck about Exy,” he says. The rest of the sentence, the part that he did not say out loud, rings in the quiet.

"If you don't want me to come, I won't," Neil tells him, as if it's that simple, even though his expression twists as he works around the words. Andrew thinks, _no_.

"I didn't say that," and then, "don’t turn this around for the sake of your martyr tendencies," he says, brushing a strand of hair away from Neil's cheek, barely touching him at all. It is irritatingly difficult to let the words go, but once they're out there, there's nothing Andrew can do. He breathes, low, "I want you to stay. I've told you this," and here it is.

And here it is — Andrew looks at Neil, and everything falls into place. Neil’s features soften again, like ice melting; he reaches for Andrew’s hand, closes his fingers around it, presses his lips to Andrew’s fingertips. It’s such an idiotic, naive gesture that something sprouts behind Andrew’s sternum, unexpected and shuddery. He lets it bloom.

”You’re a disaster,” he tells Neil, except there’s no heat in it.

”Have I ever been anything else,” Neil asks, not really meaning for it to be a question at all, the idiot. He’s smiling again, something that would be small and maybe shy if it was on anyone else but Neil Josten. This time, the smile reaches his eyes and the pieces of a broken mirror melt together, hot like molasses.

Renee said _you must miss each other._  Andrew thinks _yes_. It does not taste bitter.

”Hardly,” Andrew says, and then, ”Okay.”

”Okay,” Neil echoes, ridiculous and dazzling, rises up already forming a question, and Andrew meets him halfway, catches his lips, angles his head, gentle like he's never wanted to be, for anyone else.

The rain comes.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://ohandrews.tumblr.com)   
>  [twitter](https://twitter.com/thisbitcch1)


End file.
